Before Reason
by Toccata No. 9
Summary: Moments of love or madness or other such notions. Of course, when it comes to Jonathan Crane and Sherry Squires there is only one way this story can end.
1. Weakness

AN: First: I do not own. SURPRISE. Second: I generally prefer to keep comments to a minimum these days, but I think they might be necessary here. I'm planning to replace an older attempt at a Jonathan/Sherry 50 theme challenge with this one because I don't really like how my first go turned out and I think I can do it better. I don't know how much I'll get done. I'm going to improvise. I will do my best to keep the story accessible to new readers. Hope it's a fun ride. :)

* * *

He has become the straw-strung-skeleton Granny knew but never spoke about. He is no longer who he was, child of the country stretched thin, drenched in dust and the dull hum of insects on summer evenings. At least, this is what he hopes or believes or repeats like a mantra in his mind. He wants to be one with Gotham, this city of a thousand screaming tongues. Jonathan Crane offers himself to the smoke and glass and graffiti climbing walls he loves her needle-fingered caress on nights so black the stars seem like impossible memories. She moans for him in terror her innermost secrets, and he promises to keep these secrets in confidence because that is what power means.

And yet.

There are nights when the Scarecrow is only human, and the room is dark and the lightbulbs flicker and he is going to be free just a little longer, and in the afterglow of bourbon he finds himself faced with her freckles, her eyelashes. The lazy curve of her smile. The meticulous straightness of her hair. And in these moments he no longer cares about his new city or his power or the satisfaction of destruction-to-my-enemies. Filmed over eyes and limbs stiffening with rigor mortis, blood caked under fingernails of their own agency, chemical visions lingering on lips like prayer.

He hates her with every aspect of his being, and he hates that he hates her because that means on some level she is still important. Idiot teenage-nothing girl, specter of a past he cannot deny any more than the mask on his face.

She does not make him weak. The defect belongs to him and him alone.


	2. Analyze

He still won't say he loved her. Maybe that makes him a romantic, but for what it's worth Jonathan reasons that love and murder are not intimately connected. People faced with the sharp-slick darkness inside themselves will turn against everything they knew, everyone they thought they cared about, every idea they once believed in. That is fear. That is the world.

Love offers delusions like band-aids over amputations. A pretty concept, but useless.

He was a moron. The fragmented pieces of her lay sprawled before him like a puzzle he was too reluctant to solve. Sherry worried. More than anything in the world she was afraid of what other people thought of her. That was why she said disgusting things about him in public and laughed. That was also why she bothered to spend time with him alone. He was a boy so desperate for company that he'd put up with anything she said or did. He was _pathetic, _and no matter how he tried to hide it Sherry must have seen that too. They were truly perfect for each other.

He doesn't leave flowers on her grave. He doesn't leave anything at all.


	3. Abnormal

There are no strangers in Arlen. Bo knows Abe knows Kate knows Sherry knows Crane. Jonathan. Etcetera. You talk to some people, not to others. It's the way of things. It's immutable.

Great-grandmother Keeney likes to imagine he's one of the local delinquents and has strict rules regarding when he should be home, who he shouldn't be seen with, all the disgrace that remains unacceptable in this household. Jonathan tried to explain the situation to her once (who wanted anything to do with a scrawny, nearsighted creep?) and found himself in more trouble for lying than he would have been in for keeping silent. Ungrateful filth defending his friends. Ha.

Either way, he usually does his homework in the library so he can walk back to the house alone. Avoid classmates, avoid uncomfortable glances, avoid Granny just long enough to matter.

Sherry doesn't sit next to him. She picks a table just past his and slightly to the right. They're not even facing each other.

It isn't terribly unusual. They work separately and in silence.

For a while.

"Hey."

He doesn't lift his head, barely registers that she's spoken at all, stays focused on numbers in front of him and problems he can solve.

"Hey, Jonathan."

He freezes. He looks up.

There she is.

Sherry crooks an eyebrow. Her mouth tilts up, higher. A collection of amused puzzlement he finds himself mesmerized by.

"You're good at this shit, right?"


End file.
